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Posted on Friday 29 January 2010 at 08:50 am in category: USA
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 17 people read this.

On January 21st, Toyota announced a massive recall of vehicles in the US, Europe and China, because of a sticky accelerator pedal. Although there is a very small amount of cars in which this might actually happen, Toyota has taken its responsibility, and offers to fix 2.3 million cars in the USA alone.

The American public has seen Toyota outselling the big American automakers in the last couple of years, and the media couldn't wait to jump on this news. In the past week, I have not been able to turn on the radio in my (American) car, and hear some kind of report on the dangerous faulty gas pedal in Toyotas. Toyota's stock has taken a little bit of a plunge, although probably not as big as a lot of people would have hoped. Finally, the press has found something bad to report on a Japanese auto maker.

Posted on Wednesday 27 January 2010 at 1:51 pm in category: Anti Helden - Anti Heroes
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 30 people read this.

After writing that thing about Issei Sagawa a while ago, I wanted to write some more about evil people. In my search for evil people in history, this time I've come across somebody that may or may not be the most evil person ever (not taking people like Hitler in consideration).

The evil person I would like to introduce to you today is probably the most prolific serial killer in history. The fact that it is a woman is pure coincidence.

Posted on Friday 22 January 2010 at 08:57 am in category: Helden - Heroes
In the past week 2 people read this, in the past month 21 people read this.

You probably don't know this, but there is somebody that saved millions of lives, including yours. He might even have saved the whole planet. The guy I'm talking about is Stanislav Petrov. Back in 1983, when the Cold War was still going strong and Miley Cyrus wasn't even born yet, Stan had a pretty important role in the army of the Sovjet Union. As a lieutenant colonel, he was responsible for monitoring the Sovjet satellites hovering over the United States, to make sure somebody wasn't firing nuclear missiles at the motherland.

Posted on Wednesday 20 January 2010 at 10:38 am in category: USA
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 9 people read this.

It is now 5 and a half years ago that I first set foot on American soil, on July 4th 2004. After that things went kind of fast, and since September of 2006 I am officially a resident of the United States. You would think that after all that time I wouldn't really feel like a stranger anymore, and most of the time I don't. But still there are certain things that I will never get used to. For somebody that grew up in The Netherlands, the US can be a strange place to live. And I'm not talking about the fact that there are 12 McDonalds restaurants within a 10 mile radius of my house, or the fact that some stores here are open 24/7, but more about the way people think.

Posted on Sunday 17 January 2010 at 1:25 pm in category: USA
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 13 people read this.

While spending a couple of hours in the garage, trying to get it back in a condition where both cars would fit in it again, I was wondering why this was necessary.

When we first moved in this house, there was so much room we didn't really know what to do with it. I admit, we did put some stuff in the house that made it look a little less roomy, like a desk, furniture, a TV, a bed and some other stuff, but that really made the house more comfortable to live in.

Posted on Wednesday 13 January 2010 at 07:33 am in category: Anti Helden - Anti Heroes
In the past week 86 people read this, in the past month 327 people read this.

In the last couple of weeks, I noticed that most of the visitors to my humble blog get here after searching Google for 'Renée Hartevelt'. This is because of a post I wrote in November of 2008, in a series of articles about bad people, so I thought it would be nice to rewrite it in English.

I have some strange fascinations. One of them is that I'm interested in everything that has to do with serial killers. Believe it or not, I actually own a bunch of books on the subject, though the person this article is about is technically not a serial killer (as far as I know, he's killed once). Nevertheless, the story of Issei Sagawa is bizarre.

Posted on Saturday 09 January 2010 at 1:16 pm in category: USA
In the past week 8 people read this, in the past month 29 people read this.

Ok, I understand that driving a snowplow during the darkest hours of the night in a blizzard is not the easiest job. But overlooking a complete mailbox? It's not like it's white...

Last night a snowplow knocked over our mailbox (which is, for reasons that are still mysterious to me, across the street from our house). Now what? Is the city of Hudson going to put it back up after the snow is gone, or maybe just buy us a new one, or do they expect us to do that ourselves?